Of The Mermaid and Jupiter

"Yes, I'm sinking the ships."

Writers: Ian Mond & Danny Heap
Format: Short Story
Released: May 2004
Printed in: Short Trips: Past Tense 12

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Benny

Synopsis

16 October 1829 and The Mermaid ship sets sail from Sydney, Australia. By 6 November, the crew have experienced four sinkings, but miraculously not one soul has been lost at sea. What is the Doctor's involvement in all this? Benny won't be happy when she finds out...

Verdict

Of The Mermaid and Jupiter was a decent little adventure to get me back into my reading of the Past Tense volume of Short Trips from Big Finish. I was glad to see that there was a new pairing that I am yet to read in any of my recent short story collections and the Seventh Doctor and Benny are a pairing I have limited experience with so anything I can get for now is great and most welcomed. I do one day plan on reading through the New Adventures but time and money will make that difficult, along with the sheer volume of content out there for every other Doctor. It's hard but I'll get there one day! Now, this one saw the story take place over quite a long timeframe of around three weeks and I really liked the diary format without it actually being one of the character's diary itself. It worked well. I liked the idea of Benny being dragged around by the Doctor and I got to see a side to her I haven't seen before. She was grumpy and pissed off and didn't care much at all for life at sea. When she found out that the first ship was sinking, her reaction was really intriguing and she did seem to genuinely believe that death was certain. Her encouragement for Professor Burroughs was nice to see and I enjoyed how she was trying to talk him through survival as they abandoned ship. By the time they were on their fourth vessel though, he was having a nervous breakdown amid the constant sinking of ships. The crew really must have been cursed, and I liked that they acknowledged that. It seemed to be a fact and Nolbrow, the reputable captain, seemed to understand when the Jupiter was going down that they would not be part of the lifeboat. When Benny found out that the Doctor was actually ensuring that the ships sunk, I was shocked and I loved her reaction. He'd had many instances of not keeping her in the know and deceiving her for his own cause, but this was a step too far! She refused to help him in any way until she got her explanation, and much to Benny's surprise she got one. It wasn't a truthful one, but it enabled the Doctor to use her for his means. The ending was really nice with Peter Richley being reunited with his dying mother on board the Sydney after not seeing or writing to her in a decade. It was her one dying wish and was what all of the events were about. The Doctor wanted to help her and seeing her son again reinvigorated her for another twenty years of life and a relationship once more with her son. That was a nice touch, but this all seemed a lot of effort for the Doctor to go through just to get a meeting. I wasn't buying the whole not troubling the Web of Time thing and Benny questioning why he couldn't just use the TARDIS made sense, but trying to believe that the Doctor hadn't considered it did not. I didn't like that bit much at all. However, I did enjoy the story as a whole and the characterisation with the Seventh Doctor up to no good was terrific. Overall, still a decent little adventure!

Rating: 7/10